“Tell it like a story!” That was my mother’s suggestion to her four children whenever we started to ramble. She’d schooled us well in stories as we were growing up. I still have the tattered book of nursery rhymes, poems, and fables which she read to me every afternoon.
As I grew, the stories I absorbed expanded from Peter Rabbit and Jack and the Beanstalk to the TV adventures of “The Lone Ranger” and “Zorro”. When I was a teenager, I discovered the black and white stories of the golden age of Hollywood, with Bette Davis and Greer Garson emerging as my favorite actresses. In books and movies, I reveled in epics, war stories, romances, mysteries, and crime dramas. But for all the genres I enjoyed, I never saw or read stories about women who loved women.
Eventually I found books and the occasional movie that depicted lesbian love, even if the story often didn’t celebrate that love! Usually one woman ended up dead, leaving the other to pursue a “normal” life. Hah! Who wants “normal”?
But since the overwhelming majority of love stories were between men and women, I began to rewrite these stories in my head. As I honed my imagination, I hearkened back to my childhood story book, and I started writing my own original myths, fables, and fairy tales about women who loved women. I had found my place in the world of stories.
When I joined Portland Storytellers Guild, I gave voice to my stories. It has been a joy and a privilege to launch my stories in such a supportive, friendly environment. My fellow storytellers instill in me the same great advice I learned from my mother, “Don’t ramble; tell it like a story!”
